Does the output of the photographic process differ based on the process mode of analog versus digital? As a member of the Oregon Trail Generation1, I grew up in a household that ran with the evolution of computer technology. While I don’t believe in classifications of digital natives and digital immigrants, I can claim that for the majority of my life, digital processes have existed to do all sorts of things, including creating art. Digital tools were always a big part of my formative years as an artist and visual communicator, with my origin story kicking off with my mom bringing home software from the community college where she taught and inviting me to “play” and see what might happen. I ended up teaching myself web design, graphic design, and even early interactive design as a result of that gift, finding myself in a creative mode that I’ve never left throughout my career and life.
While the memories of my formation in digital art remain vibrant and impactful on my career, I also look back fondly to my years engaging in analog processes as well. I started with photography in 5th grade, back when creating and printing photos had little to do with computers or digital devices. I had desired to learn about the process after discovering my mom’s old camera and lenses, and looking through prints that she had made in a traditional wet lab. My parents enrolled me in a summer camp to learn photography, and I still remember loading strips of film onto reels in a light-proof bag, processing rolls of film that I’d shot, and learning how to work an enlarger to create my own black and white prints. Years later, the act of creating photographs through an analog process sat separate and distant from creating digital art. I had a proclivity for remixing images as digital collages, but hadn’t thought about what it would mean to leverage remix practices in an analog setting. So, in 2004 and 2005, I took a little time to remix my thought process around digital collaging, but instead of using cut outs of printed or digital objects, I decided to remix light.
Sans Souris was my attempt at separating myself from the computer to perform digitally-informed techniques in an analog environment. The photo merges that resulted were either created through multiple exposures at the enlarger with different negatives, or with a single exposure of “sandwiched” negatives. I used techniqes to dodge and burn light at the enlarger, better understanding why the dodge and burn icons were what they were in Adobe Photoshop—the dodge icon of a circle on a stick was used to block the light from the enlarger onto certain parts of the photo paper, and the burn was a hand forming a circle where light could shine through onto the paper while other areas were blocked. It was interesting to see myself making connections and references to innate digital processes by immersing myself in the analog photo world.
I found myself working on Sans Souris during a time of evolution in the products and outputs of photography. Being able to buy and print on lustre and metallic paper was a revelation, as was being able to replicate specific film speeds digitally that were discontinued for analog usage (I still think wistfully about my time shooting with Kodak Tech Pan2). Concerns over the sustainable practices needed for a wet lab to be safe meant that many of the photography innovations were moving into digital spaces. And as I worked in those fading days of analog photography, it brought me all the more close to the works of masters of remix like Jerry Uelsmann3 who created analog works that one would swear now were made with a computer, all before computers had the ability to produce images of that kind.
To this day, my favorite part of viewing art is being able to consume the stories that live within a work. I can pretty quickly decide whether I love or hate a curated collection based on the storytelling alone, and whether an artist or curator was generous with the story behind an image. In that meaning-making is a social practice, what lovelier experience exists than to be able to see the ingredients of remix as a part of exploring the final piece of art. When I shared the works from Sans Souris in a show at The City College of New York, “CCNY Women Make Art,” in 2005, I wanted to be open about the process that went into making the works and to give folks a way to dissassemble and reassemble the images themselves, as well as the stories behind each image. I shared thumbnails of the combined works, often mixing negatives that had been created in geographically disparate locations. A mossy wall on an old fortress in Italy communed with leaves on a tree around the corner of my house that seemed to be burning with the light of the sun. A cherry blossom trunk taken in my hometown of Washington, D.C. held an image of the arch in Washington Square Park in my home away from home, New York City. I was remixing images and light, but I was also remixing my life and the distances I was covering over time. My goal at the time was to create photos that people would need to slow down and take time with, which was a harkening to the slow processes that I had to take to compose these images without computers. But now, so many years later, I think I was attempting to build connection by sharing my stories through the art of remix without having ever considered these phots to be remixes of images, memories, and mindsets alike.
- The Oregon Trail Generation (sometimes referred to by the portmanteau “xennials”) is a sub-generation used to classify those born between 1977 to 1983, and describes individuals who sit in the liminal space between Generation X and Millenials. The name comes from a popular video game that many of us played in school, The Oregon Trail, which you can still play on the Internet Archive’s Internet Arcade. For my work on narrative digital learning practices, I once made a game that remixed the original computer game and the spin-off card game as a way to teach the need for resources and collaboration in supporting quality online learning. The game continues to resonate for so many adults who interacted with it in ways that transcended learning about the history of migrations across the United States. ↩︎
- Kodak Technical Pan was a film that I adored for its smooth, fine grain and ability to preserve details with stunning accuracy. It stopped being sold in 2004 after some of the chemicals needed for its production (as well as the developer needed for it) were not available any longer. ↩︎
- Jerry Uelsmann (b. 1934, d. 2022) was an American photographer who innovated within the space of contemporary photography through photomontages made by composite printing. Learn more about his revolutionary work on his website. ↩︎